Yes, he loves wind power. But beyond that, I lose more respect for the oilman every day. Consider what he wrote on his blog Friday:
Met with Sarah Palin the day after her debate with Joe Biden. She came to our Dallas offices with her husband, Todd, to talk about energy and the Pickens Plan …
Governor Palin comes from an energy state, and I’ll tell you, she gets this energy situation. We talked about it like two oil and gas professionals.
Pickens is calling Palin his equal? I guess that is what one would call “self-disqualification.”
Palin is a one-talking-point deep joke on energy. I take that back. No one who has a serious chance of becoming vice president under a 72-year-old multiple cancer survivor can be called a joke.
There are only two plausible explanations for Pickens’ comment. Either he really believes what he is saying, in which case he is losing it. Or, more charitably, he is pushing standard conservative spin, which merely proves that he still doesn’t understand which party is <a href="https://grist.org/article/grim-pickensin favor of his big government-led renewable energy strategy and which will fight it to the death.
If you want straight talk from a rich, conservative energy expert who gets peak oil, you’ll have to stick with Matt Simmons: “John McCain is energy illiterate. He’s just witless about this stuff.” Here is the rest of Pickens’ puff piece:
When we sat down in our conference room, we talked about the debate and then, because I knew she was short on time, we got right into the business at hand — energy, and the danger of continuing to import 70% of our oil requirements.
We spent some time talking about ANWR — the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. We didn’t agree on how much oil is up there, but I told her I was all for drilling. You know what I say about this: I’m for anything American.
Her husband Todd sat in on the meeting. You know that he’s a steelworker in the oil fields during the Alaskan summers, so he understands a good bit of this, too. He was interested in the concept of filling your vehicle in your garage overnight using the same gas line that goes to your kitchen range and hot water heater.
Governor Palin wanted to understand the idea that the federal government should lead the way in moving to vehicles fueled by natural gas. We also talked about how to make the biggest impact quickly: Moving over-the-road trucks away from diesel and onto natural gas. I told her that if we had one million trucks running on natural gas, we could cut our imports of foreign diesel by 40%.
These candidates travel with a big entourage of advance people, staff, press, and Secret Service, and after nearly an hour one of them came into the conference room to tell her they needed to get going. But Gov. Palin took the time to take a group photo with Todd and me sitting in front of my staff, which was very thoughtful of her.
I don’t know who is going to win this election, but I do know whichever team wins they’ll know about the Pickens Plan.
— Boone
Scholars and Rogues comments on a Monday Pickens interview with David Gregory. A. Siegel dismantles a recent blogger call Pickens had.
This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
